Lubia Polo is a delicious Iranian rice dish of beef or lamb and green beans in rich tomato sauce. Make this Persian recipe for a comforting weeknight meal

There are plenty of recipes for delicious Iranian rice dishes that you can make quickly and easily. But when you want something that serves as both a main and side dish, look no further than lubia polo.

Also known as: Other names/spellings include loobia polo, green bean rice, and Persian ground beef rice.

Similar to a crispy tahdig rice, this Persian dish features a crispy layer at the bottom of the pot, however it’s potatoes in place of rice. Above the potatoes is a ground lamb or ground beef rice with green beans.

Finally, there’s a rich tomato sauce flavoured with cinnamon, Persian spices (inside the form of advieh), and saffron threads. Those flavours transform the dish into something truly special.

Components of Lubia Polo

The ingredients inside the dish tend to vary through family, and it’s a flexible recipe, so adapt your ingredients to whatever you have on hand. There are three most important steps to making lubia:

Cook the rice.

Almost every Iranian rice dish is satisfactory made with long grain white rice, and lubia polo is no exception. Basmati and Jasmine are my personal favourites. The use of a short grain rice like arborio isn’t a very good preference as it’s more likely to overcook and/or turn out to be sticky. The rice can be steamed, boiled, or even microwaved; the key’s to barely undercook it. This manner, when you add it to the other ingredients for the very last cooking step, it won’t emerge as smooth.

Put together the meat and green bean stew.

The meat for the stew is generally ground lamb or ground beef, however it could also be made with cubes of meat. If you need to make it with beef, pick a cut with a little bit of fat marbling for flavour and to prevent the meat from drying out.

Cubes of sirloin steak or chuck roast might be top notch.

Cook the contents collectively to create the tahdig.

Creating a potato tahdig is optionally available, however it makes for a lovely presentation! In case you want to skip the potatoes, that’s first-rate; just combine the cooked rice and stew in a pot for the final cooking process.